Callings

(after W. Whitman)*

Day and night they swarm us making of silence a circus of hints, nudges, urgings we swim in, an ocean of almost, of not-yet. Heidegger noticed a hidden intimacy between beings and times, a pre-notice that makes notice possible. A jungle of preliminaries that don’t appear so, presenting as would-be completed, stable, except for what they ask of us. What that is we begin to know by responding. An encompassing darkness slowly allowing itself to be persuaded by daylight not to turn over and go back to sleep. What now is more appealing than sleep? Streams of thought and image unfinished, wanting dreamed-of finishing or at least furthering. A picket fence wanting another coat of paint, a wooden outdoor bench another coat of varnish. Imagined scent and shape of tea, toast and bacon, stairs between floors to the kitchen re-shaping themselves. There are no more circuses, but we have Internet’s raucous pre-imaginings of mind. A mirroring screen telling us what calls to us to want, do, make, once we wake out of preferred imaginary non-engagement. Sky and trees, fences and ground put on daylight colors. Traffic takes over our streets with its dragon hiss and growl. Our engagement with each and all looks to be just starting but is already old. Moving between appearance of beginnings and furtherings is a kind of awakening. Old stuff with new faces, both real, not arguing. The sky we fly to Belize in also makes horizons for us. Practicals and metaphors.

Old moon new moon
winks at our deceptive solitude.

*See his “On the Beach at Night Alone”

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